Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is considering dissolving the Lower House and calling a general election by the end of the year, Democratic Party of Japan executives said Monday.
Noda will decide on the timing while keeping an eye on cross-party discussions about whether to establish a rule that would make passing the debt-financing bill for the annual budget less of a political football and how to reform the Lower House vote-value disparity, the executives said.
Noda appears to have judged that he has to fulfill a promise he made to major opposition party leaders in August that he would go before voters "sometime soon" in exchange for obtaining the opposition camp's support to secure passage of the consumption tax hike, his prized goal.